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katherine.weingartner@ecologic.eu's blog

Home to about four million people, it may seem that what the Arctic’s inhabitants - even working together - can do to mitigate climate change, is be a drop in rising oceans. In 2015, however, the Arctic Council unanimously adopted a framework directed at just this. This for the first time, according to environmental lawyer at Earthjustice Erika Rosenthal.

In Greenland’s capital Nuuk, climate change is palpable as a snow-poorer season, a home-grown potato, a new fish in the ocean. As seen by 15 inhabitants, an anthropologist, an ice fjord fisherman and the Minister of Fisheries, Hunting and Agriculture, nature’s changes can bring both obstacles and possibilities.

A unique Arctic Council Framework to reduce black carbon and methane emissions was - once again - adopted on April 24, 2015 at the Ministerial Meeting Simulation as part of this year's Arctic Summer College Program. The Arctic States unanimously agreed to enforce a framework that, although non-binding, should help mitigate climate change.

100 days after the successful negotiation of a global climate agreement in Paris, the Arctic is facing some of the warmest winter temperatures on record. As communities face threats to personal safety, livelihood, and culture, one pressing question remains: what effect has and will the COP21 agreement have on the four million people that call the Arctic home?